Charles Micallef (TMID, 22 March) never tires to target, mock and ridicule the work done by teachers in our schools. He still believes in the restricted and outdated term of teaching which, to his mind, starts off at 8.30 in the morning and ends at 2.30pm.

How incorrect he is! Most of the teachers take their work with them, some keep on correcting homework up to the very late hours of the day, while Mr Micallef might probably be contemplating some thoughts to bash up the teaching profession with. Needless to say that there is a lot of paperwork and pre- and post-planning which takes place in teaching which Mr Micallef simply ignores. Your correspondent simply cannot fathom the fact that every other profession is a result of the teaching experience each and every one of us has had during the times and days we spent in schools. Whether it’s a nurse, a doctor, a lawyer, a skilled worker, a manager or what have you, they have simply come to be what they are due to their learning experience at the hands of teachers whom your correspondent so fondly criticises.

I have great respect for the dedication of a good number of nurses and paramedical staff. But some of them, either due to a lack of dedication or understaffing, show that they are in the wrong job. This is very evident from the way they deal with some patients. I would not be doing justice if I were to generalise and lump all the nurses into one category of indifferent and careless employees. I believe that Mr Micallef is simply doing this!

Mr Micallef clearly does not know anything about the dynamics that occur within and without the classroom walls which ends up being more of a tiring and a burn-out experience than most other jobs. If this were not so, can he explain why the teaching profession, being as he claimed such an easy job, is failing to attract prospective teachers?

Just see how the number of student teachers enrolling at University has dramatically declined over the past years! If things keep on going as they are, within a few years there won’t be anybody enrolling in the teaching course at University and the political administration needs to start analysing seriously why this is so. Otherwise we would end up importing teachers as we are doing in other sectors of employment.

I invite Mr Micallef to perform the teaching job for a couple of days while allowing the rest of us to micro-assess his performance. Only then can he start criticising others. With regard to obesity and lack of PE lessons, this falls squarely on administration policy of individual schools and thus even here one simply cannot generalise.

Again, with regard to private tuition this is more complex than the simplistic manner your correspondent tried to deal with it. It is not the teachers who ask parents to send their children to private tuition for extra support; it is simply the other way round. Parents are not managing to find time and know-how to deal with their own children’s scholastic difficulties. Some teachers end up performing private tuition with genuine interest to help these children achieve better results. In private tuition the child can be given more individual attention and focus can take place on his individual learning deficiencies, something which is not always possible in a whole class situation. Mind you, I do not say that some do not do it for the extra money it entails.

Thanks to the changeover to the euro, we have entered a new reality of comparing salaries with our counterpart European workers without the previous excuse of currency rate differences. Nurses, teachers and all other civil employees are coming to terms with the fact that, notwithstanding the boastings of politicians, we Maltese are the least paid and the mostly taxed in Europe.

Saviour Sammut

Safi